Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 20, 2025

Problem-Solving Before Instruction PS-I: A Protocol for Assessment and Intervention in Students with Different Abilities
Published on: September 11, 2021
The precision test of metacognitive sensitivity and confidence criteria
Derek H Arnold1, Mitchell Clendinen1, Alan Johnston2
1School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Abstract:
Humans experience feelings of confidence in their decisions. In perception, these feelings are typically accurate - we tend to feel more confident about correct decisions. The degree of insight people have into the accuracy of their decisions is known as metacognitive sensitivity. Currently popular methods of estimating metacognitive sensitivity are subject to interpretive ambiguities because they assume people have normally shaped distributions of different experiences when they are repeatedly exposed to a single input. If this normality assumption is violated, calculations can erroneously underestimate metacognitive sensitivity. Here, we describe a means of estimating metacognitive sensitivity that is more robust to violations of the normality assumption. This improved method can easily be added to standard behavioral experiments, and the authors provide Matlab code to help researchers implement these analyses and experimental procedures.
Related Concept Videos
Metacognition
Self-Report Tests of Personality
Multiple Comparison Tests
It would be easy to compare two samples using a significance alpha level of 0.05. In other words, there is only one sample pair to be compared. However, it would be difficult to identify a significantly different sample if the number...
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Critical Thinking II
Self-Presentation: Self-Monitoring and Self-Handicapping

